The Cruel Side of River Views

Photo from internet

Today, Christmas Eve, I skied for a couple hours along the bank of the partially frozen river.  It was a spectacularly beautiful experience, until I spotted something horrific about 20 feet out on the ice.  It was a deer lying motionless on her stomach, with her four legs splayed out to the sides and her bushy white tail stretched out behind her.  From a distance it looked like she was still alive; her chin rested on the ice and her ears were up, as if she'd spotted me and was waiting for my next move.

Photo from internet

But she wasn't alive.  She was dead, frozen in time and in thin ice.  I spotted the hole she'd evidently fallen through, about 30 feet out.  Ice fragments had been thrashed around over the surrounding ice.  It looked like she'd fallen in and then struggled shoreward and up onto more thin ice, where she collapsed from exhaustion and hypothermia, unable to gather the strength to pull herself any farther along on the slippery surface.I couldn't help but linger at the scene for several minutes, trying to accept the cruelty of nature and wondering what I'd have done if I'd found her alive and struggling.  How long did it take her to die?  What were her thoughts?  Was she in pain?

Silly human questions, asked from a human perspective.  Yet we all fight death, whether we're humans or animals.  We all cling and claw.  None of us likes to be cold, wet, helpless, or vulnerable.  Surely there are a few moments of animalistic panic for just about all of us when death looks us in the eyes.  We can't be that different from each other.  Thus, I owed it to this deer to linger, out of empathy for what she had experienced in those final minutes of life.

Just two days ago we'd heard a former neighbor mention how hard it had been for her to live on the river bank and watch animals die in the ice each winter.  And just last night, another riverbank neighbor told us of foolhardy rescues he had attempted over the years....rescues that put his own life at risk.  Some ended happily; others ended in tragedy.

Fortunately Don and I don't live right on the river.  We're up several hundred yards from it, and there are thick trees and railroad tracks separating us from the view.  Waterfront river property might be prime in some people's books, but not mine.  I couldn't stand to watch these never-ending natural tragedies on the ice.